Days had passed since the initial assault had taken place, and only now where the various nations of the galaxy beginning to pick through the pieces.

The Scythian Empire had sent a second wave fleet in order to secure the rough and blasted world, only to find that Ereberus had been split asunder by some massive catastrophy, and the remains of the planet where ripping each other apart, the atmosphere had been shredded clean off the surface of the world, the Ice that once covered its surface had been melted into gas by its self-sterilizing sun and was forming into a halo of frozen icey particles in the midst of the now ever growing asteroid field that used to be a desolate world.

Automated probes and tugs moved slowly through tumbling rocks and debris as ships where pulled out of the dead battlefield - remnants of Britannian, Immortal and Scythian vessels alike - and soon a space station was dragged into the system via FTL to aide in the decompiling of black boxes, retrieval of enemy technologies and the proper burial of the dead.

Immortal and Brittanian ships alike probed their defences, but found little sway or interest in the Scythian efforts to pillage through the wrecks - instead only setting off automated self destruct systems on the most valuable of ships and then leaving - fearing the Scythian forces would use thier newly found super-weapon against them.

A super-weapon that had long since been taken away from the field.

This entire effort was set up by one man, the one man who had set himself up as de-facto "Emperor" of the Scythian Empire in the original failures stead.

The head of the Scythian Office of Naval Intelligence.

He of course was worlds away - watching live feeds of the retrieval efforts from the homeworld itself - deep within layers of automated and manned defences, enveloping shields and space stations and the single largest defence fleet in the entire Empire.

In the power vacuum of the Emperors shift exit, he had been the first to apply his power, suggestions through underlings that then lead to his equals and superiors - setting himself up in the seat of power he needed for his plans, acquiring access to the single most top secret part of the Scythians history.

KINGUNDERTHEMOUNTAIN

He had long known before others that Scythia's sucsess had been built upon the shoulders of others - it it wasn't for the ancient superbattleship buried within the Blade moon of Scythia, the empire would have never discovered its advanced Anti-matter technologies - or the secrets of the FTL drive that allowed them to expand beyond the reached of those with traditional Hyperspace drives, or even thier advanced Laser technologies . . .

. . . but that wasn't all they found. Buried within the systems of the ancient ship where records of another world known as "Eerf" which had been involved somehow, in an ancient war between fleets of red and black vessels that had devastated the cosmos.

Ships that now matched current Scythian and Immortal ship classes.

The vessel itself now brought into question - as research matched its hull pattern to that of the Preatorian Exodus siege dreadnaught - but with massive levels of alterations . . . but the ships hull was un-mistakable.

He frowned to himself as he delved further into the archives.

Relics and artefacts that should never have existed in this universe, weapons and ships designed to weather through the end of an entire universe, scattered across the stars as if left, for the races of today to discover.

The Emperor himself had been present in the battle with one of those weapons - something that should have been impounded on the far edges of the Mousetrap system, and far beyond prying eyes, in his travels he had somehow stolen hundreds of artefacts from under the noses of his own intelligence services through a mixture of his own intelligence networks, loyallist troops, brute force and subterfuge for a cause he couldn't begin to understand.

He began a series of checks and double checks - and then ordered every single artefact and item that KINGUNDERTHEMOUNTAIN had in thier possession moved to a new, secure location - one of his disgression . . . anything that couldn't be moved was to either be locked down or destroyed by a controlled Anti-matter blast as appropriate.

And then he re-opened another file - one that he had been working on for months - if not years.

One file contained the entire Genoan and Scythian gene-sequence, with associated links to psionic capabilities, another - the vauge few files on Immortal cores, and a third was a single image of the galaxy - linked by some form of massive psychic field that was apparently growing slowly in power every day - with strands reaching outwards from the galaxy towards red marker arrows.

The few confirmed inbound Immortal fleets.

He looked from one file to another - knowing that soon his plans would come to pass.

Total control of the universe would be his, there would be no mistake.

I am not as pleased as I could be with the total result - but I have had this thing clogged up in my brain for over a year now - so eventually the final product will never match what I had set out to begin with.

Some bits where missing - the Behemoth -vs- Wraith fight I have pulled from this too add to the next story, Betrayals, along with a few other bits and pieces I need to re-jigger and push about so that I can better figure out the next story - as I have done this Harry Potter style, I have already decided how the whole lot is going to end . . . I just struggle with getting there (there is another story after Betrayals that I am still deciding on how to name - Either "Entropy" or "Time cascade" I am not sure yet).

The next story will be longer again, but fewer character point of views, as thats where I struggled to move from different sets of events taking place at the same time.

As for KINGUNDERTHEMOUNTAIN, The Shraag - Perchance to Dream, The Emperor of the Scythian Empire and everything I have put together in my army thread.

Yes - the whole lot is connected - along with The Immortal Empire (with Warheads permission, given WAY in advance) and a couple of other people who I had talked to long ago, but I need to do so again.

One thing I need to sort myself out with is dialouge and characters and action - I need to pad things out a bit more, and make each "section" generally longer - more events, longer writing sessions and NOT to let myself get caught into more "well shit, how do I write myself out of this?!" traps.

Which I am an utter shitbag for - seriously, you guys won't believe how many times I have done that in this story ALONE.

Also - I get the feeling that writing from the POV of ANOTHER almighty/allpowerful/Immortal/AI character will eventually get boring - its good for perspective of events, but not for anything beyond that.

Now, I am going to give myself a little while to sort out my shit before I edit the spelling mistakes out and put the complete version to the Wiki, in the mean time - comments and critisms are appreciated.

So for now - Peace Ya'll, and be sure to look out for the next Scythian "short" - Betrayals.